Objections to the implementation of the Judges Competency Framework

The following is the text of
a letter sent to the Kennel Club on 30 September 2017, which was written at the
behest of and has the approval of the Committee of the Border Terrier Club.

Judges Competency Framework - our concerns

At a recent Border Terrier Club Committee meeting, a unanimous decision
was reached to write an open letter to ask the Kennel Club to discontinue the
introduction of this complicated and costly exercise and to revert to the
status quo. As a club, as exhibitors and as judges, we were quite happy with
the way things were already organised.

The Committee, while having some very experienced
breeders, exhibitors and judges (including CC judges) also has, included in its
number, people of varying ages and experience, who we feel reflect the general
show-going population.

Some of our reasons for writing to you are as follows:

A) EFFECT ON BREED CLUBS:

1) We already run and pay for the
type of seminars you will want in future but feel that the further work being
asked of breed clubs is just too much and is a step too far. These new
responsibilities are:

2) Planning and organising and
paying for mentors: as well as having these added responsibilities we are also
concerned that Mentors need not be active judges, but can be leading
breeders who do not judge, retired judges or even people who have not had the
breed but have "recognised and current experience in the breed". In
our opinion anyone who has not owned or judged the breed is unlikely to be
qualified to act as any kind of mentor.

3) Planning, organising and
paying for observers, at various types of show. Mention was made that
mostly breed people do not charge clubs for expenses, when asked occasionally, but if they are asked frequently, some
might have to charge, given that some of them might be retired people who have
limited resources.

4) Added financial burdens
because all breed clubs will be expected to offer supported entry classes to a
minimum of two general open shows each year. Supported entry may include
paying for the judge's expenses if any, rosettes, prize cards etc...and the
observer’s expenses.

5) Added financial costs for payment
for Mentors’, Observers’
and Assessors’ expenses to come from profits
arising from breed education seminars BUT at present, in order to provide a
service to our stakeholders, we do not normally make much of a profit, and mostly
just charge sufficient to cover expenses (some Border Terrier Clubs we know run
their seminars at a loss as a service to the Breed and to exhibitors and
judges). In future, we might have to increase the costs of these to make a
profit to pay for mentors, observers and assessors expenses? We would not wish to
do this, as we feel it will be counter-productive. We do not want to charge so
much that prospective judges might not afford to pay to attend such educational
events. In addition as we believe that many breed specialists will decide
they do not want to go forward with this complicated and costly exercise,
additional requiredprofits to pay for
all the expenses will be harder to generate.

6) Finding observers at
present we do organise A2 list assessors for our breed club open shows and
evaluators for 1st time CC judges but this is often very difficult. More
observers will be required in future and that will add to the difficulty of
finding appropriate and qualified people to perform the task.

7) Much of the above has to be
done in conjunction with a Breed Education Co-ordinator (whoever may be
daft enough or self-important enough to take on that role). We felt that most
of the people who we would wish to ask to perform the task would probably be
unwilling to do it and those who would want to push themselves forward for it
might well be doing so in an attempt to influence judges of the future and
progress their own or their friends’ dogs in the show rings of the future.

8) The practical implications of
the time taken in the implementation of this system, not forgetting that all
the people who serve on Committees are volunteers who give of their time
and travel at their own expense and help to organise shows, seminars and the
like already but who may well feel this is a request too far and decide to
throw in the towel. This Framework appears to be very professional, strategic and corporate, but you
appear to forget or ignore the fact that breed club committees are all
volunteers running their clubs with limited resources.

9) As the breed clubs have had no consultation on the new JCF PRIOR
to announcement of all the detail (a day at KC HQ would have made
sense!) we think it is important to feedback our very legitimate
concerns. Although you are now seeking some review by a select few clubs
(presumably chosen by you without consultation with ALL breed clubs, so we
wonder how they were chosen and who selected them), we feel this should have
been done BEFORE you decided on the detail, or even before you decided that the
new Framework should go ahead at all.

Before you even started all
this, you should have invited say 10 or 20 breed club secretaries (chosen at
random from volunteers - AFTER you advertised for volunteer clubs to
participate) to a "think tank", taken over a couple of days, laid out
for them beforehand what you were intending, then had discussions with them at
the KC as to what pitfalls the secretaries could see in a practical way, before
just announcing the scheme. Was it perhaps that you were keen to impress other kennel
clubs around the world, that you had to rush it in without consultation?

Who knows,
you might have been advised of all our concerns BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION and
decided not to go ahead with it.

Regarding
your "pilot scheme" - we always thought that pilot studies were done
beforehand rather than afterwards. That might be an old-fashioned view in your
minds, but it is a practical and democratic one.

10)
A number of breed club secretaries are well
used to tackling legislation and rules and try their best
with everything the KC brings out to get on top of what is required as soon as
possible. Even for them this new system is far too complicated, time consuming
and costly and was not needed – things, certainly in our breed, were working
very well the way they were.

11) Where are the clubs' Officers
and Committee supposed to find the time to undertake all the extra work?
Perhaps you do not realise how busy secretaries already are? Our Secretary spends
at least a few hours or more every day on Border Terrier Club business and
there is always a long list of jobs not yet done. She just does not have the
extra time to devote to this, unless she has no family life at all. Some
secretaries also work in full time jobs - which ours did for a long time - and
then come home from work, go straight to the home "office" and do
Club work for hours. WHERE are all these people supposed to find the time to
implement all this additional work?

12) The KC
has recognised in the past that some
Clubs find it difficult to get people willing to serve on Committee or as
Secretary.If they could not find people willing
to serve before, how much more difficult will it be now? Most Secretaries are
mere mortals and we as a Committee feel that a lot of them will throw in the
towel, along with a number of decent breed specialist judges.

B) EFFECT ON EXHIBITORS AND ENTRIES OVERALL:

1) Exhibitors
generally prefer to show under breed specialists (with the occasional
allrounder/non-breed specialist/multi breed judge). As this new scheme is more
inclined to advance the prospects of the latter and increase the number of
shows judged by them, we feel that this will lead to dissatisfaction with
showing and reduction in entries, the very things we understand you are trying
to avoid.

2) We have,
as a breed, noticed more allrounder judges allocated to our breed in the last
couple of years at General Championship shows and indeed, some shows where
they have employed them every year for many years. As one of the generally
highest entries in the Terrier Group at other General Championship shows where
breed specialists are judging, we feel that this works against what our
exhibitors and members would wish to see. We have had comments that "I am
not travelling hundreds of miles for an allrounder" and "I have missed
many of my favourite shows this year as they are not judged by someone who
knows the breed." and many other such comments. Ask the exhibitors what
they want and you might reconsider this new Framework.

C) EFFECT ON JUDGES:

1) We worry that if the new Framework
is implemented, we might lose some very good breed specialists, and lose
out on bringing on new breed specialists, who may decide that it is too much
and throw in the towel too (a lot of towel throwing might take place).

2) Our judges have long been the
envy of the world and rather than bring the world up to our standards, you
seem to be demeaning the judges here and bringing in unnecessary new hoops for
people to jump through when some of them were almost at the point of awarding
CCs now.

3) On that last point, we have
some breed specialists who only had one or two items left on the A3 list
criteria to achieve, after years of working towards them, for example one case
where only 2 stewarding appointments remained for the person to fulfil ALL the current
A3 list criteria (which includes 12 stewarding appointments), but because
you are bringing this in, they stand little chance of now being considered for
the A3 list and it is like a game of snakes and ladders for them - they were nearly
there, heading for the top, when the (KC) snake knocked them back down to the
bottom of the ladder again and they had to start again with all new features of
mentors, assessors and observers. Some might just leave the dice as they lay
and fold up the board. Good people may have lost out to the system. All the
more galling as under the new system, people only have to steward 4 times
(granted for full days, but our breed specialists have often undertaken full
days at a busy breed club show, as our entries for our Open shows are around
and sometimes well above 100 dogs with a lot of repeat entries, which challenge
their control of the ring).

4) You talk about the numbers
required under the current criteria being just a "numbers exercise"
and have also done away with the "adequate geographic spread". We
consider both of these things very important, given that our Championship shows
have high entries (apart from a few recent ones where allrounders were
judging). Our judges need experience in terms of numbers judged, so that if
they are presented with a championship show entry of say 100 or more, which is
the norm (and some Gen Ch shows have been nearer 200 for breed specialists),
that they have had experience of judging numerically high classes/shows and are
not overawed by the experience. Adequate geographic spread is important so that
judges have had sufficient experience of judging different types of dogs and
not just the same dogs at different local shows.

5) We also think the Framework will
put a lot of new people off judging at all. In the past, we have had people
who have said, when they are on a C List but not yet taken all the seminars and
were being encouraged to take them so they could maybe progress to the B lists,
that they just wanted us to take them off the lists instead, as they were not
that keen on jumping through all the hoops. We think we will get more potential
good judges saying they do not want to take it any further because the whole
process is too complicated and too involved. We realise this will open it up
for more allrounders, which to be frank looks like your main aim here! A lot of
us prefer to show under someone who is perhaps a reluctant judge but who cares
about the job they are being asked to do rather than those who pushed themselves
forward to judge and regard the process as part of a ‘career’. Now the new
system takes it one step further and seems likely instead to reward those who
push.

D) EFFECT ON GENERAL
CANINE SOCIETIES:

1) We worry that the Framework
will have an adverse effect on General Canine Society Open shows, who
struggle as it is to find judges and ring stewards. This new JCF would reduce
further the opportunities for people to gain hands on experience which in our
view is such a vital training ground for judges before they progress to higher
levels. This country is unique in having a reasonable open show scene but the
KC seems intent on destroying such of it that currently exists.

1) Under the current A2
assessment procedure, the identity of the assessor/s is unknown to the judge,
so the assessor can make valid comments to the KC without fear or favour, or
worrying that the next time they meet the judge it might be under acrimonious
circumstances. The JCF allows the judge to know the identity of the person
mentoring and observing them. There is then the possibility of two
repercussions:

a) recriminations if the judge does not find the approval of the mentor
and observer,

or

b) the danger that some mentors and observers may err on the side of
caution and give a pass mark for fear of such recriminations, thus reducing the
procedures to a box ticking exercise.

F) CUSTOMERS HAVE
RIGHTS: CONSIDER ASKING US FIRST!

1) Lastly, but quite important we
feel - as well as exhibitors referred to in paragraph B above, we the Breed
Clubs are also your CUSTOMERS - without your customers, you have no
business and as you are now a Limited Company, will you please listen to your
customers, go back to the beginning, SUSPEND
THE INTRODUCTION OF THIS Judges Competency Framework and ASK us first what
we want. Survey all clubs, judges and exhibitors to ask if we are, or are not,
happy with the present systems and then if it turns out that the majority of clubs, exhibitors or judges do not want
or need any changes of such magnitude forced upon them, then abandon the
Judges Competency Framework!"